SpaceX launches rocket with South Korean spy satellite

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying South Korea’s first spy satellite, was launched this Friday (1st) from Vandenberg Space Base, in California, United States.

This comes shortly after North Korea successfully launched its own military reconnaissance satellite in November.

South Korea’s satellite was placed into orbit and, just over an hour after launch, “successfully established communication with a ground station,” the South Korean Ministry of Defense said.

SpaceX ended its live broadcast of the mission minutes after the rocket took off and recovered its core stage booster, without showing the deployment of the South Korean payload.

In May, South Korea used its own Nuri launch vehicle to put a mission-capable satellite into orbit for the first time, but has hired US company SpaceX to launch a total of five spy satellites by 2025.

With the missions, the country wants to accelerate the goal of having 24-hour surveillance over the Korean peninsula.

South Korea has relied on its U.S. allies for satellite information but is planning a series of military communications and reconnaissance satellites as part of a broader push into space.

After two previous attempts ended in rocket crashes this year, North Korea used its own launch vehicle, the Chollima-1, to lift the Malligyong-1 reconnaissance satellite into orbit.

Pyongyang has not yet released any images of that satellite, and analysts say its capabilities are unknown.

North Korean state media says the device has already photographed a range of “target regions,” from the White House and Pentagon to U.S. military bases in South Korea, Guam and Hawaii, and the South Korean capital, Seoul. .